The giant oak that stood in the middle of Spring Hollow’s one and only city park began to turn, it’s ruddy yellow leaves signaling to observant citizens the official start of autumn. For reasons that no one had ever even thought to try and explain, the giant oak was always the last tree to turn, and it had an uncanny way of starting to change year after year exactly on the day of the autumnal equinox.

The town’s newer and younger residents had yet to take note of this phenomenon, while the older citizens simply accepted it, the way that they accepted that funny ache in the joints that always heralded rain. Given a chance, the more superstitious among them might tell anyone with the patience to listen the tales that were passed to them by their elders, of a time before the town stood, when the mountain folk would come down each year, from the Ozarks in the West and Appalachia in the East, to meet at the spring from which the town got its name and trade their wares.